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Over 60 works from the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino (GAM) are on view for the first time in China at the Chengdu Art Museum.

The exhibition Encounters from Afar: Masterpieces from the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino celebrates the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and the People’s Republic of China. It charts the evolution of Italian and European modern art from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, beginning with Romanticism and Impressionism and reaching the avant-gardes of the 20th century. Encounters from Afar invites visitors on a captivating journey through the great transformations of modern painting, guided by paintings and works on paper that span over one hundred years of art history, from Portrait of Carolina Zucchi by Francesco Hayez (c. 1825) to People in the street by Renato Guttuso (1956–1957).

The works from the GAM in Turin, one of the most important and renowned collections in Italy, include some of the most celebrated and representative pieces by Italian artists such as Giovanni Boldini, Giacomo Balla, Giorgio de Chirico, and Giorgio Morandi, presented alongside European masters including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Johannes Itten, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and many others. This carefully curated selection of masterpieces is travelling to China for the very first time, offering audiences a rare opportunity to engage in dialogue with European artists of the past, sharing sensations and reflections on the everyday life.

The exhibition, a collaboration with Villaggio Globale International, is under the guidance of the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage and the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, and is supported by the Embassy of Italy in Beijing, the Consulate General of Italy in Chongqing, the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing, and the City of Turin.

In the history of art, portraits have never been a mechanical reproduction of physiognomy but have always carefully interpreted the relationship between man and his historical time, whether in a symbolic and mythological key, when only gods and emperors were represented, or in the realistic and even abstract form of modernity.

The exhibition Faces of Time takes a journey through time to observe the evolution of portraiture and the likeness of the human figure through the ages, creating a way of recording the profound meaning of Western art history, its humanism and its transition from mythology to the psychological introspection of modernity.

Through 56 works from the collection of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum we travel between divine themes, court symbolism, status symbols and profound humanity. A journey through five centuries of Western portrait painters, from Baroque to Pop Art with original works by Van Dyck, Lacroix, Chagall, Warhol and many more.

A broad and sophisticated representation of the relationship between man and his own image. With the support of Art Exhibitions China and Japan-China Cultural Exhibition Association.

European art of the 20th century was characterized by many changes, a continuous search between form and concept, figuration and abstraction, colour and line, tradition and innovation, mapping artistic ideals born in an area of change.

Realism, expressionism, informal or impressionism, fauvism, metaphysics… Art is always a process of constant rupture, of overcoming boundaries and seeking the infinite, but it is especially in this era.

Wuji is this definition, the breaking of boundaries and limits. This concept animates the entire exhibition and selection, presenting 62 masterpieces by the greatest Italian and European artists of the period, outlining the evolutionary path from classical art to modern avant-garde, showing the historical transformation from figurative art to abstract art.

Important works by 47 representative masters of the 20th century including van Gogh, Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Kandisky, Morandi, René Magritte, Giacomo Balla, de Chirico and Lucio Fontana are exhibited for the first time in China.

A careful selection of artworks makes up this great international project created to enhance the collection of the only Italian museum entirely dedicated to modern and contemporary art, one of the largest and most important in the world: the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Rome.

“The Infinite Universe of Wuji” is a collaboration in occasion of the 2022 Italy-China Year of Culture and Tourism.